Fluxblog 518: mildly funky workplace
Plus new songs by Tate McRae, Panda Bear, and Banks
This week’s playlist is PLACE SERIES #9: MILDLY FUNKY WORKPLACE, which is 3 hours of funk, jazz, fusion, and miscellaneous grooves conducive to a fun, productive environment. In case you missed it, I published an issue earlier this week collecting all 9 of my Place Series playlists, which are intended for specific environments and situations. If you have any requests for future Place Series playlists, let me know! [Spotify | Apple | YouTube]
All My Inner Thoughts Sound Like Ahh Ahh
Tate McRae “Purple Lace Bra”
My impression of Tate McRae’s earlier music was along the lines of “hey, why shouldn’t there be a new pop artist who is to Britney Spears and the Pussycat Dolls what The Black Crowes were to The Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin?” I don’t see why certain styles shouldn’t continue to exist as part of a larger musical tradition. It’s silly to treat this stuff like it should stay frozen in one cultural moment when so many other types of music are kinda always around.
This take shifted a bit upon spending some time with McRae’s recently released third album So Close to What. The aesthetics have moved up the timeline a bit, and now all the songs sound like a scrambled version of pop aesthetics from the mid to late 2010s. And this makes total sense: McRae is 21, and it’s logical that her taste and frame of reference for pop is basically stuff I heard in Ubers around 10 years ago.
Some of the songs on So Close to What pull from music I have only a vague passing familiarity with, leaving me with low-grade deja vu. Other songs are a little easier to map out – “Purple Lace Bra” pulls a hook directly out of Beyoncé’s “Drunk In Love,” folds it into another section that sounds a lot like Rihanna, and the chorus feels like Reputation-era Taylor Swift spiked with a little bit of Ariana Grande. There’s also a lyrical hook that rephrases a memorable part from Olivia Rodrigo’s “Bad Idea Right?” I don’t think the way this song strings together these aesthetics should work, but it does. The “a little from column A and a little from column B” mix-and-match approach turns out to be coherent in this case.
McRae isn’t really known for being coherent. Her vocals are so “cursive” the words often blur together in a way that’s a little like unintentional shoegaze aesthetics. “Purple Lace Bra” isn’t one of her more extreme songs in that respect, and that’s fortunate given the lyrics get a little interesting. She’s singing about getting frustrated with a relationship with a man who pretty much exclusively values her for her body. There’s a lot of resentment in the lyrics – “I’m losing my mind ‘cause giving you head is the only time you think I’ve got depth” – but not enough that she seems like she’s about to dump him. The song takes place at a point on this relationship timeline where the grievance is there, and she’s in the negotation stage of dealing with it. There’s still some room here for the guy to take her seriously, but I’m less hopeful about it than she is.
Buy it from Amazon.
Unstuck From The Dark Side
Panda Bear “Just As Well”
Panda Bear and his collaborators in Animal Collective are masters of taking a basically normal song and giving it a wild and flamboyant arrangement. They’ve done this a lot of different ways through the past 25 years, but this “hey, wouldn’t it be cool if it sounded like thing no one else would consider doing” impulse is the through line in their overall body of work.
In this context, Panda Bear’s new solo record Sinister Grift is among the most regular-sounding music anyone in AnCo has ever produced. But even in a straight forward mode, Panda’s palette is bright and bold and a little surreal. A lot of it sounds like a Margaritaville version of his old classics, or like he’s trying to make something that would feel right on a cruise ship.
I find this incredibly charming, particularly on “Just As Well,” a song so bouncy and bubbly that it’s easy to miss that the lyrics get fairly bleak. He’s mainly singing about feeling “stuck on the inside” and hoping to get out of a rut, and I suppose that eagerness to change is what makes it a Panda Bear song. There’s always some degree of optimism in his work, and a desire to improve as a person.
Buy it from Bandcamp.
People Can’t Escape Their Fate
Banks “Delulu”
I’m sure plenty of people can and will take “Delulu” at face value, but it’s pretty clearly written as a parody of someone so utterly convinced their situationship with an indifferent guy is leading to something more profound, to the point that she’s frustrated her therapist to the point of being dropped as a client. Banks sounds like she’s having a good time with this song, hamming it up for the fun of it, but also to make it apparent she’s singing in character. But still, there’s enough potent emotion in how she sings “I only wanna be with you, I know we’re gonna see it through” that you could easily not clock the bitter irony of the next line in the chorus being “can’t wait for you to see it too.”
Buy it from Amazon.
LINKS LINKS LINKS LINKS
• Josh Terry is celebrating 100 issues of his fantastic newsletter No Expectations! Go on and subscribe if you haven’t already, he’s a top tier music blogger.
• Speaking of reliably excellent bloggers, Nicole Tremaglio has a very interesting interview with Y2K: How the 2000s Became Everything author Colette Shade in this week’s Nicstalgia.
• Novelist and comics writer Alex Segura makes a strong case for the excellence of Keith Giffen’s “Five Years Later” version of Legion of Super-Heroes that was originally published from 1989 through 1992. It’s one of my favorite sci-fi/superhero stories of all time, and while it had a huge impact on me when I originally read it around the time I was 12/13, it has only grown in my estimation as I’ve periodically re-read it through the years.
As Alex explains, it’s not the easiest thing to digest, but the level of craft and ambition is extremely high, and the political point of view through the run is very sharp and unfortunately very prescient. If you’re curious, you can either buy it in one fairly expensive omnibus, or read it all on the DC Universe Infinite app for a modest subscription fee. I recommend the app, as it contains a majority of the DC/Vertigo back catalog and new issues pop up within a month of print publication.
• I love this video of Seal speaking passionately about the unique soul and artistry of Alice In Chains. I’ve tried and failed to write about Alice In Chains a few times in the past few years, and he so effortlessly describes what’s interesting and compelling about their music.